As our name suggests, DeSci Hub, you can imagine we’re pretty stoked about decentralized science’s progress in 2024. Major crypto players, like the founder of Binance, CZ, took a serious interest in DeSci, directly leading to Bio Protocol’s (BIO) Binance Launchpool; multiple DeSci players also launched native tokens, including ResearchHub (RSC), PoSciDonDAO (SCI), and Data Lake (LAKE); and innovators like AxonDAO (AXGT) announced the release of a wearable biometric tracker (CureRing) that stores data inside its own digital infrastructure (CureOS), showcasing a real-world product born out of the DeSci ecosystem. While all impressive, the sheer potential for DeSci in 2025 is almost unimaginable.
These DeSci highlights were only the tip of 2024’s iceberg. It’s estimated that DeSci’s market cap grew to around $1.3 billion last year. For a sector that very few people knew about in 2023, that’s pretty amazing, and as we march into a new year, we believe DeSci in 2025 will leverage its momentum to be one of the most exciting crypto narratives. The relentless pace of technological advancement, coupled with an increasing desire for transparency, collaboration, and efficiency in various scientific fields, suggests that decentralized science will take center stage inside — and maybe more importantly — outside the crypto-sphere.
While token value may attract Web3 natives, the utility and real-world applications currently being introduced by various DeSci entities are already attracting independent researchers, institutional decision-makers, academics, traditional investors, and the general public. If 2024 was a year to lay down DeSci’s groundwork, then DeSci in 2025 is poised to be a groundswell. Here are a few reasons why:
Traditional Scientific Research Models Are Quickly Becoming Antiquated
The heart of the DeSci movement is a critique of the current scientific ecosystem. Traditional models of research, funding, peer-review processes, and other aspects of scientific roadmaps, which are often controlled by centralized institutions like universities, corporations, and government agencies, have led to several significant challenges, including:
- Bureaucracy and inefficiency: Traditional funding channels can be slow, lack transparency, and prone to administrative delays. Tokenization and crowdsourcing can streamline the funding process.
- Access to research: Scientific journals and publications are frequently behind paywalls, limiting access to crucial knowledge and creating information silos among researchers, as well as between researchers and the general public.
- Incentive misalignment: Funding models often reward short-term projects or outcomes that are likely to generate profit rather than focusing on long-term scientific discovery or societal benefits.
As the limitations and challenges of these centralized structures become increasingly apparent, scientists, researchers, and innovators can turn to blockchain technology and the DeSci ecosystem to access a more decentralized, open, and efficient alternative.
Blockchain‘s Practical Applications Fuels Decentralized Science
The inherent functionality of blockchain technology can revolutionize the scientific world in multiple ways. If the DeSci movement is the vision of a more open, collaborative, and transparent scientific world, then blockchain is the nitty-gritty tech that can realize the movement’s mission statement. The tech offers practical solutions to some of the most persistent problems within the research ecosystem, such as:
- Transparent Funding and Granting Systems: Traditional research funding often faces issues such as corruption (or interest conflicts), lack of transparency, inefficient resource allocation, and long wait times. Blockchain’s immutable ledger can make the funding process more transparent, allowing contributors to track how research funds are spent. Projects can be funded directly by a decentralized community of investors, like token-holders of a DAO, reducing funding dependence on centralized bodies.
- Decentralized Peer Review: One of the major criticisms of traditional scientific publishing is the peer-review process, which can be biased, slow, and often excludes valuable research. Blockchain can provide a decentralized platform for peer review, ensuring that all research undergoes a fair, transparent, and rapid review process. Smart contracts can manage and reward reviewers, creating a more efficient and incentive-driven system.
- Open Access Data and Collaboration: The data that drives scientific discovery can be made more accessible through blockchain-based platforms, allowing researchers worldwide to access raw data, analyses, and findings. This democratizes science by breaking down paywalls and enabling greater collaboration across borders and disciplines. Open access to data could accelerate the pace of scientific breakthroughs, especially in areas like medical research, climate science, and renewable energy.
- Immutable Scientific Records: Blockchain’s immutability ensures that once research data is published, it cannot be tampered with or falsified. This adds an unprecedented layer of trust and reliability to scientific records, especially in an age where data manipulation is a concern.
Tokenizing Research Democratizes and Incentivizes Science
One of the most exciting developments in the DeSci space is the practice of tokenizing scientific research. Tokenization involves creating digital assets (tokens) that represent ownership or participation in a project, allowing individuals to invest and/or support scientific work.
- Funding Research Through Tokenized Crowdfunding: Instead of relying on traditional grants or venture capital, DeSci-associated researchers can often raise funds directly through tokenized assets. This allows for micro-investments and provides an opportunity for token-holders to support scientific endeavors that align with their interests. Whether the token represents a stake in a particular project or an association with a DAO community, the token serves as an intriguing investment opportunity if the research leads to commercial applications or other successful outcomes.
- Incentivizing Participation: Tokens can also be used to reward contributors for their participation in the scientific process. Whether it’s providing data for research (AxonDAO’s A+ Voice project) or peer-reviewing papers (ResearchHub’s bounty system), individuals who contribute can receive tokens that have value within the ecosystem. This creates a more participatory and incentivized environment for scientific collaboration.
Open Science Fosters Interdisciplinary Innovation and Cross-Collaboration
DeSci in 2025 will open the door for interdisciplinary collaboration on a scale never before possible, and as artificial technology advances and augments human scientific inquiry, researchers are now discovering valuable connections between all types of seemingly dissimilar fields of science.
Blockchain can connect researchers from diverse fields, fostering new forms of innovation that wouldn’t have emerged in siloed, traditional institutions. With decentralized platforms, researchers from biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and social sciences can share data, collaborate on projects, and offer insights in real-time.
In other words, the broader DeSci ecosystem allows for a cross-pollination of ideas, creating a fertile ground for breakthroughs that address global challenges like climate change, personalized health, and technological stagnation.
The Growth of DAOs in Scientific Research Aligns Incentives
The rise of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) will play a crucial role in DeSci’s continued growth. While DeFi tools can facilitate lending, staking, and yield farming, providing new funding avenues for scientific research, DAOs, which are governance structures powered by smart contracts, allow researchers, token-holders, and contributors to collaboratively manage research projects.
- DAO Governance: In many DeSci ecosystems, research funding can be governed by DAOs, where token holders vote on which projects receive funding, which directions research should take, and how intellectual property (IP) should be shared or commercialized. This empowers the community to directly influence the scientific process, ensuring a broader range of voices is heard.
- Incentive Alignment: DAOs are designed to align the incentives of researchers with the community. For example, a DAO could reward scientists not only for successful projects but also for those who prioritize societal good over profit or long-term research over rush-to-market motives, leading to more ethical, sustainable scientific development.
Applicable Utility Supports DeSci Ethos
As mentioned previously, the heart of DeSci lies in the push for a more open, equitable, democratic, and efficient scientific world. By creating decentralized platforms that remove gatekeepers, and replacing these traditional processes with blockchain tech and smart contracts, DeSci in 2025 will be poised to make science more inclusive, accessible, and ethical.
Smart contracts and blockchain technology can handle intellectual property rights, licensing, and royalties, ensuring that researchers and scientists maintain ownership over their work, while allowing them to share their discoveries with the world in a manner that protects their contributions.
As public trust in institutions wanes, the decentralized nature of blockchain offers a way to rebuild credibility in scientific research. By allowing researchers to interact directly with one another and the public through tech advancements and nuanced platforms, DeSci can crystalize its vision of a more transparent and accountable system that also streamlines scientific discovery.
The promise of DeSci in 2025 is not just a pie-in-sky, futuristic vision. The movement can begin cementing a growing reality that reshapes the way science is conducted, funded, and shared. From improving transparency through blockchain to accelerating breakthroughs through open-science collaboration, DeSci will emerge as a critical narrative within the crypto ecosystem, with the potential to unlock new levels of innovation and societal progress.
The question is no longer whether DeSci will eventually become a dominant force. The question is when it does, how will it transform the methods of discovery and the future of knowledge? We’ll have to wait and see. Regardless, one answer is clear: the next evolution of crypto is science-based.
